Dashiell Hammett
ebook | Pages: 224 pages Rating: 3.97 | 21768 Users | 1374 Reviews
Mention About Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
| Title | : | Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1) |
| Author | : | Dashiell Hammett |
| Book Format | : | ebook |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 224 pages |
| Published | : | May 1st 2003 by Orion (first published February 1st 1929) |
| Categories | : | Mystery. Fiction. Crime. Noir. Classics |
Chronicle In Favor Of Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
I’ll give you three good reasons—from least to most—why you should read Red Harvest: 1) it made possible the fine Leone film A Fistful of Dollars, 2) it inspired the Kurosawa masterpiece Iojimbo which influenced A Fistful of Dollars, and 3) it is an old school hard boiled, hardcore novel, with a detective as tough as Spade, Marlowe and Hammer put together, written in hard-as-nails prose, and set in a small West Coast city, a city with a heart of stone.
The City is Personville, and people call it “Poisonville,” but not because they are speaking with an accent. A few years before the book opens, mining tycoon and city boss Elihu Wilsson called in some thugs and goons to break a mining strike. Oh they broke it alright, but now these gangsters—with names like Lew Yard, “Whispers,” Pete the Finn—have carved Elihu’s little city into fiefdoms, and Boss Wilsson is not the boss anymore. Our detective, the nameless “Continental Op”--employed by the Continental Detective Agency—soon begins systematically destroying the rival gangs by sowing lies and discord among them. Sure, there is a murder the Op has to solve, but soon, in addition, we have stabbings, ambushes, furtive late night shootings and afternoon gun battles. And a good looking but slatternly gold digger too. Everything a reader could want.
At least you’d think so, wouldn’t you, and it would be enough for your average hard-boiled novel. But three-quarters of the way through, the Op begins to realize he likes all this killing, and after drinking too many laudanum-and-gins and dreaming some stone-crazy dope-head dreams, he wakes up to find a bloody ice pick in his hand. Now the Op has one last murder to solve, and he can't exclude himself as a suspect.
Red Harvest (1927) is certainly a genre classic, but it is also a great book on any terms. The prose is spare, the metaphors are crisp, and, although the narrative is often crowded with incident, the plot remains simple and clear and close to the bone.
Details Books As Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
| Original Title: | Red Harvest |
| ISBN: | 0752852612 (ISBN13: 9780752852614) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | The Continental Op #1 |
| Characters: | The Continental Op, Elihu Willsson, Dinah Brand, Dick Foley |
Rating About Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
Ratings: 3.97 From 21768 Users | 1374 ReviewsPiece About Books Red Harvest (The Continental Op #1)
In each fictional genre, (war, romance, western, mystery, etc) there are usually a few books which that genre's fans near-unanimously consider to be holy; sacred: icons, landmarks, milestones. In any genre's canon there are sometimes only as few as 2-3 of the very most-revered relics--invoking the greatest and most unqualified renown among fans--or (though it happens rarely) even just one. This is the case when it comes to hard-boiled American pulp crime fiction from the 1930s; this is the caseA perfect rejoinder for whenever you are next accosted by some bothersome elderly person prattling on about how things used to be so much nicer (e.g. books, movies, *chuckle* the world). Little more than ten years shy of being a hundred, this pulp classic is as volatile a read now as it was when it first spilled ink across the pages of Black Mask. As André Gide put it, "a remarkable achievement, the last word in atrocity, cynicism, and horror." Last word? Well, maybe not. But this rollicking
The fountainhead of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", "Unforgiven", and the "Untouchables". With spawns like that you can imagine the intensity and the death toll--I lost count after 17; I wasn't halfway through the story. A lone gunslinger rides into town...Cleaning up whether it wants it or not.Little did I know just how right I was at the quarter mark. This is so noir. You read it and you can hear the voiceover in your mind as it flows. There's a lot of booze, bootlegging, bribes, drugs, a
Red Harvest opens when an unnamed detective known only as The Continental Op is hired by a small-town newspaper publisher to investigate local corruption. The Op arrives in the ugly little mountain village, known locally as Poisonvilledue to the extensive mining pollution or vast criminal element, take your pickonly to discover his client has been murdered before their meeting can occur. Rather than turn tail and run back to San Fran, our fearless detective decides to follow through with his
"Who shot him?""Somebody with a gun."But everybody has a gun in Dashiell Hammet's first novel (1929). This is one of the most action-packed books I've ever read, 200-some pages of black cars skidding around corners with gangsters hanging out of them spraying bullets everywhere.Hammett's weirdly chaste, unnamed protagonist arrives in Personville bringing absolute bloody havoc with him, for reasons even he's not completely clear on. He's not much of a hero: "a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled,
The review is updated yet again on January 20, 2020.I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to
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